It seems that the Mosul Dam is raising its ugly head again. The repair work isn't finished, but the Iraqi government hasn't committed to the second phase.

Mosul Dam risks devastating failure as Iraq government keeps stallingThe Iraqi government has delayed a decision on whether to renew a contract with an Italian engineering firm managed by the Corps of Engineers when it expires after this year. It may try to make the critical repairs itself to save money at a time when it is feeling a cash squeeze because of the cost of the war to expel the Islamic State from the country.

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, commander of the Army Corps, told USA TODAY he fears the government is "going to be too optimistic" about the level of repairs needed and may not renew the contract.

The government is running out of time to make a decision. “I’m kind of expecting in another couple of months we’ll either get a decision or probably not get a decision, which means by default then ... we’ll unplug,” Semonite said.

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This is the dam project that was built principlally on gypsum, if I remember correctly, which was always a big arrse catastrophe in waiting. I recall it was the subject of a documentary (? al Jazeera) a couple of years ago. Indeed, one of the nearby sinkholes in the Gypsum landscape around Mosul was also used as a mass grave by ISIS -Horror of Mosul where sinkhole became mass grave for 4,000 of Isil's victims

Together with leakage of domestic cess pits, general city drainage (such as it is) and other industrial wastewater flows, the seepage is slowly dissolving the limestone, gypsum, anhydrite base around the reservoir, and NGO estimates put the failure of the dam at a minimal cost of 500K - 1M lives.http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a472031.pdf

It is probably already too late to prevent a disaster, as the Italian contract is only a 'boy's finger in the dyke' temporary measure anyhow! The fault was in the original planning and design. Were ISIS not the main problem right now, and the Iraqi government less incompetent, then a different strategy might be adopted. It will fail, much like the state itself, but it will cause further waves of migration and probably assure few will return to the region from the refugee camps in neighbouring states. Various failure models for the dam have been conducted since 1984 -https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:976202/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Pakistan expects China to fund a long-delayed Indus river mega dam project in Gilgit-Baltistan, part of disputed Kashmir, with work beginning next year, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in an interview.

Pakistan has been keen for years to build a cascade of mega dams along the Indus flowing down from the Himalayas, but has struggled to raise money from international institutions amid opposition from its nuclear-armed neighbor India.

Those ambitions have been revived by China's Belt and Road infrastructure plans for Pakistan, a key cog in Beijing's creation of a modern-day Silk Road network of trade routes connecting Asia with Europe and Africa.

The $12-$14 billion Diamer-Bhasha dam should generate 4,500 megawatts (MW) of electricity, and a vast new reservoir would regulate the flow of water to farmland that is vulnerable to increasingly erratic weather patterns.

Polio making a comeback in Syria. Previously nearly extinct. Cholera and Polio are becoming benchmarks of collapsing sanitation systems. The problem with recurring diseases like this is all that it needs is for one carrier to get on a plane, and you have a public health emergency halfway around the world.

Interesting article on sediment loss and river estuaries- which is where many cities are built, and which rely on wetlands as part of their flood defences.
Implications are that increased damming of Asian rivers will leave their coastal areas and urban centres more vulnerable to flooding and storm surges.

Forget about water , according to the BBC the sand is running out.
No more concrete or beaches or filtration plants.

What about the kin Sahara , Gobi, Namib or all of Australia?

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Logistics.
What do all these places have in common?
They are miles from anywhere where people want to build stuff.
The amounts you need weigh in the thousands of tons, and it isn't economical to move it long distances. So you try to get sand from as close as possible, which usually means buggering up the local waterways by dredging them up.

Two years ago, it was predicted that 50 million Iranians would need to migrate.
Question- are they going to go sideways into Pakistan, or Iraq (already wrecked, and dry).
Or north, into the soft underbelly of the 'stans?

Two years ago, it was predicted that 50 million Iranians would need to migrate.
Question- are they going to go sideways into Pakistan, or Iraq (already wrecked, and dry).
Or north, into the soft underbelly of the 'stans?

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If Wikipedia is correct about the affiliations, that news site is citing various terrorist organisations as their authoritative sources of information. I'm not sure that I would want to be taking what they have to say too seriously, nor would I want to be promoting their propaganda.